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It is the biggest acoustic challenge Resul Pookutty has faced in his feted career. He is attempting to archive the sounds of Thrissur Pooram, an event whose visual aspect has been comprehensively captured and relayed by national and international media.

But not enough justice has been done to the sounds of the pooram, a polyphonic musical performance whose range in melody and rhythm would make a full-fledged concert orchestra pale before it.

In order to capture the music in its purest form, the same artists – including the legendary Peruvanam Kuttan Marar and his team — who participated in the Thrissur Pooram recreated another pooram, sans elephants and the teeming crowd, at the nadavazhi (main path) of the historic Peruvanam temple, two days before the actual pooram.

Here, Resul and his dedicated team of technicians and sound engineers recorded myriad sounds – from the mighty thimla to the subtlest beats of the edakka that flow from one end to another, like a fluttering wave during thaniyavarthanam stage in panchavadyam.

As we reached the recording site in the forenoon of Wednesday, Thiruvilwamala Hari had just blown the conch shell three times and announced the beginning of the famous madathil varavu panchavadyam.

Resul looked up at the boom mic hanging overhead and realized that the angle is a bit high. He signalled his deputy, Unni, to bring it down a little.
He then walked down among the array of drummers, clangers and trumpeters and adjusted their individual mics a bit forward and sideward. “I know it is a crazy thing to say. But I am trying to capture a 1,400 year musical tradition, in all its purity, with the best acoustic gadgets available globally,’’ he says during a small break between recordings of concerts that go on late into the night.

It is Resul’s dream to record the melams at Thrissur Pooram as he feels that it is definitely the biggest sound event in the world that needs to be showcased globally. “I made this point when I received the Oscar. An NRI based in the US, Rajeev Panakkal who hails from Thrissur, happened to read that comment and approached me to make my dream come true,’’ he says.
Resul reveals that he came to know about the project only two weeks ago. “There was not much time to get things organised. But I watched many videos based on the pooram and realised that none of them captured the essence of the sound experience. For such a venture we need to have many layers of live sound tracks that have not been used in the country till date,’’ he says.

In Indian movies, Resul says, a maximum of 12 to 24 sound tracks are generally used. “In the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, 28 sound tracks were used. But here we are using 250 live sound tracks which is a phenomenal achievement,’’ he points out. Resul then began his search for a unique software that can record so many sounds live. “I knew the sound recordist of Titanic had used boom mic recording system. But when I came to know that my own senior colleague in the team, Chirag, had used it, I was happy. We then acquired the software from Germany and France,’’ he says.

The team is also using Dolby digital and stereo recording and will be combining the two formats to get maximum clarity and originality. “In addition, a holoform microphone is also operational. This equipment is in the shape of a human head and captures sounds as our brain processes them,” Resul explains.

The idea, he says, is to recreate the original sounds of melams for people who have not seen Thrissur Pooram and never likely to see it in their lifetime. There are 25 people working in Resul’s team day and night to get the sound tracks in perfect pitch.

But not everything went smoothly as planned. For instance, though permission was given to perform inside the Peruvanam temple premises and record the performance, some fringe groups protested saying that since Resul belonged to a different religion this cannot be allowed.

But for Resul this came as a blessing as the naduvazhi leading to the temple had the best natural acoustics. “When I clapped my hands here, I could feel the reverberations. To imagine that one of the first melams was performed here 1,434 years ago was a humbling thought in itself. I have kept over 30 mics just to capture the sounds from the instruments,’’ he says.

Peruvanam Kuttan Marar agrees. “Resul’s effort to capture the feel of illenjithara melam is commendable as even a visually challenged person can now enjoy the pooram,’’ says Marar after he leads a two-and-a-half hour pandi melam here.

Resul recalls how he first heard illenjithara melam along with his bapa who used to switch on the radio on the day of the pooram. “The radio was my first sound source for many new things, like the sound of a car etc. I knew then that a story can be told through sound alone. I still remember our neighbour, an achayan who used to pass through the winding road in front of our house to tap rubber. At that precise moment, the radio used to play its signature tune in the morning. It is what you call a panning sound shot as I was to subsequently learn at the Institute. Melam, too, is such a deja vu moment for me now,’’ he says.